SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have spent most of the presidential race avoiding direct confrontations with each other. But the men are in first and second place in the polls and that'll strain even the most loving relationship. And this week, as NPR's website put it, Trump went birther on his rival, questioning whether Senator Cruz is even eligible to run for president because he was born in Canada. With the two in the lead, both establishment and some anti-establishment Republicans have expressed concern that either man could win. Well, here's one of them, Matt Kibbe. He's the former head of the tea party group FreedomWorks and he's now part of the superPAC that supports Rand Paul's campaign. He joins us in our studios. Mr. Kibbe, thanks so much for being with us.
MATT KIBBE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: How do you see the differences between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz if it got to the point where you felt you had to make a decision?
KIBBE: Obviously, when I was at FreedomWorks, we weighed in in supported of Ted Cruz very early in his primary challenge in Texas. So I'm a big Ted Cruz fan. But I think the fundamental differences between what I would call Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies - he's all about what he would do as president. And you never hear him talk about the Constitution, you never hear him talk about the Bill of Rights, you never hear about him and the rule of law. Whereas Ted Cruz wears that stuff on his sleeve.
SIMON: How do you analyze Mr. Trump's rise? What do you think he's tapping into?
KIBBE: Well, there's two things going on. One is a clear sense of economic anxiety and the feeling amongst a lot of voters that the country's headed in the wrong direction combined with a sense that Washington doesn't really give a damn. The other thing that's going on, which I think is more fundamental and I think both Republicans and Democrats are struggling to understand this, is a transformational moment in politics. It's more disintermediated. The party bosses no longer get to decide who the choice is. And with the ability to drive your own message and organize your own get-out-the-vote machine without the party's blessing, all sorts of candidates have become competitive. Donald Trump is definitely part of that, although he's sort of the odd man out because he's more of a cult of personality.
SIMON: Is he though, at the same time, tapping into some of the sentiment that you and the tea party began to raise?
KIBBE: He's definitely tapping into the anxiety that Washington is broken and that the economy's headed in the wrong direction. But the fundamental difference between the way I think about the tea party - and I'm a card-carrying member of the tea party - is that we talked a lot about the rule of law and we worried that President Obama was very much overstepping the powers of the presidency. And Donald Trump clearly doesn't care about that stuff. He makes it very clear that as president he would do what's necessary to get the job done.
SIMON: If Donald Trump nevertheless were to become the Republican nominee, what do you do?
KIBBE: If Donald Trump becomes the nominee, you're almost guaranteed a third-party challenge, perhaps both from the Republican side and the Democratic side. And it might also lead to the death of the Republican Party. I think they're sort of walking on eggshells right now. And it goes back to this question about disintermediation. The two-party system has very much been dependent on the ability of party bosses to control the message, to control the money, and the party that best understands that that world is no longer there is going to flourish in this new environment. I think, in some ways, Donald Trump is a creation of the Republican establishment's unwillingness to accept this new world.
SIMON: Is Mr. Trump also the creation, in a sense, of the beneficiary of the creation of the tea party?
KIBBE: You know, I've looked at the data on this, and it depends on how you define the tea party. He definitely - I mean, I talk to tea partiers every day and he definitely has support from some of them. And he also has - some of the strongest opposition comes from the tea party. I think it gets to this question of executive power. But I also think that he's drawing from a lot of Democrats, a lot of independents, a lot of people that have not been participating in the political process before. And I should say - we should mention that the same dynamic is happening on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders is in large part tapping into some of those same anxieties. He has, oddly enough, some of the same positions as Donald Trump on some key issues.
SIMON: Oh, for foreign policy, they sound very similar.
KIBBE: On foreign policy, on immigration. Bernie Sanders has a history of being opposed to new immigration. It's sort of that closed-system view that, you know, our best days are behind us. And, of course, Bernie Sanders is giving Hillary fits in New Hampshire and Iowa.
SIMON: Matt Kibbe is a senior adviser at Concerned American Voters. Thanks so much for being with us.
KIBBE: Good to be with you.